…literary tomfoolery and other nonsensical musings…

Tag Archives: Historically Underutilized Demographics

Milkface, being born in 2009, does not understand the significance of Barack Obama’s presidency. In his frame of reference, a person of color could always be president, should always be able to be president. As of tonight, we can add women to the talent pool. Milkface, his friends and many children will be blissfully unaware of the significance of tonight’s event, too.

Regardless of one’s feelings for Hillary Clinton, tonight we should celebrate an event I honestly believed I would never see. And when the celebration is over, we need to resume the hard work of advocating and supporting those who remain unrecognized and overlooked. Our nation has come so far but has much further to go.

I look at Milkface’s friends, my friends’ children, random children and want them to live in a world where opportunities are not limited by gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, economics and geography. The notion “It was that way when I was a kid and I turned out fine” must be rejected.

I’m not saying this as a mother. I’m not saying this as a professional woman who has been sexually harassed at work, paid less than a male peer, denied a job because I was “at the age most girls have children” or invited to make someone a sandwich. I’m not saying this as a woman who has been the victim of sexual assault.

I’m saying this as a human being who happens to be a woman, who recognizes that a single hole in a glass ceiling doesn’t automatically mean there is a ladder for the rest of us to climb. We, still, have to build the ladder.